We extend our welcome to people of all races, cultures, and colors; to people of all sexual orientations; to people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities; to people of every legal, economic and marital status; and to all those whom the world seeks to separate, divide or isolate. We celebrate your identity as a gift from God and we welcome you to a diverse community of believers united in our faith.

We invite you to bring your disappointments, transgressions, losses and pain and lay them at the cross. We welcome you to a grace given freely to all, unearned by our worldly successes and undeterred by our spiritual failures.

We share with you God's call to serve our neighbor, expressing divine love in acts of hospitality, outreach and kindness. We commit ourselves to offering openness and understanding, justice and healing, to all people.

We are a Reconciling In Christ congregation, supporting the full participation of our LGBT members and neighbors in the life of the church, locally and world-wide.

Thank you for visiting Advent Lutheran Church's website! I pray you find a word of hope and new life in Jesus here. Whether you are reading this at your computer at work in an office building, in your home uptown, downtown, or in the suburbs, or at an internet cafe half-way across the world, the message of the Gospel of Jesus is for you. When the world says, "It's not about you," Jesus says, "It is about you."

You are always welcome to visit one small part of Jesus' community here at Advent. We are a community that cares.

Advent Lutheran Church has occupied the corner of 93rd and Broadway in New York City (Manhattan) since 1900 and has been celebrating the good news of Jesus ever since. While the neighborhood around us has completely changed in these 112 years, the heart of our message has stayed the same. That message is:

Every living creature is created in God's image. God called the creation good. Each one of us is unique, gifted in different ways to serve God's diverse creation. Everyone has a gift given to her or him by God to be shared with others on this earthly journey of human life.

Each one of us is loved by God, just as we are. We are recipients of God's grace and love, which comes to us through no effort of our own. We do nothing to earn God's grace, but it comes to us anyway, regardless of our past failures and failings or the things in our lives we are not proud of.

Jesus was sent into the world to show us another way. Jesus' way is not the world's way. Rather, it is a way of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness, regardless of the gravity of sins that have been committed against us. Jesus died and rose from the dead offering life and hope to ordinary people like you and me.

God calls us to live not in isolation, but in community with one another. We are all bound together in this common human experience. The Holy Spirit gives us strength each and every day to meet life's greatest challenges and keep going on.

If you are in New York, please stop by and meet us. If you need someone to talk to, don't hesitate to contact us. If you have a prayer request, please submit it online and be confident that we will be praying for you. We would love to see you, hear from you and get to know you - at one of our worship services or whenever you're passing through.

May God's grace pour through your life, creating a strength and confidence the likes of which you've never known!!

Advent Lutheran Church is a multicultural, progressive congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Advent strives to be an inclusive community of faith, where the example of Jesus' welcoming all people remains foremost in our mission and ministry. We host a variety of children and youth programs, as well as a full complement of adult education and faith development opportunities. In addition, we reach out and serve our community through a monthly food pantry and community lunch program to which all are invited. Advent utilizes a wide variety of the many resources of the Lutheran tradition in our worship services. We welcome diverse forms of liturgical expression while maintaining the historic beauty we have inherited in the Lutheran liturgy and hymnody. We recently began using the new Evangelical Lutheran Worship Hymnal for our Sunday services.

Individual communities of faith, such as Advent, can each shed a particular light on what it means to be Christian in today's world. Advent's gospel message is of worship and service, lived out in a community of faith. From feeding the hungry to being open to all sorts of worship experiences, from welcoming people of many different lifestyles to listening without judgment to each other's beliefs and unbeliefs, from supporting each other in prayer to searching out ways to further the cause of economic and political justice, we are a community. Come and live life as part of a Christian community. The support and love you receive here may make all the difference in how you live your life.

Pastor J. Elise Brown

Better known to many as "PB", Pastor Elise Brown was born and raised in Urbandale, Iowa and did her undergraduate work at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She continued her education at Union Theological Seminary, earning her Masters of Divinity degree, and at Lutheran Seminary in Chicago, earning a Masters in Theology. She also did a year-long internship at Redemption Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Pastor Brown served at Epiphany Lutheran Church in the Bronx for seven years before coming to Advent in 1999. During her ministry there, she was asked to join the ELCA Urban Team and has worked as part of a small group of consultants who advise regional synods and church groups on how to focus on outreach, revitalization and growth in urban churches.

Pastor Brown is excited every day by the tremendous ethnic and cultural diversity of New York City. She is currently working towards a PhD in Sociology with core concentrations in race & ethnicity and poverty & social stratification. PB enjoys reading, and, if time and resource allows, throwing clay on a potter's wheel. Most of all, she enjoys travel with trips to Peru, Ecuador and India.

You may contact Pastor Brown at pastor@adventnyc.org.

Pastor Jim Sudbrock

Pastor Sudbrock's primary responsibilites at Advent lie in Adult Education and Pastoral Care.

Pastor Subdbrock holds masters degrees from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and NY Theological Seminary and an honorary doctorate from Wagner College. He served his seminary internship in Cuba; congregations in San Francisco, CA, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Mt. Vernon, NY; as coordinator of the the Bronx Lutheran churches and the Lutheran judicatories in the New York area; as assistant to the bishop and bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod; as Director of Pastoral Care and Chaplain at the Wartburg Adult Caring Community, Mt. Vernon, NY.

Pastor Sudbrock is married to Eleanore Feucht Sudbrock, educator, author, human resources consultant. They live on Broadway in the Bronx, overlooking Van Cortlandt Park, and have two married children and five beautiful, bright granddaughters.

You may contact Pastor Sudbrock at sudbrock@msn.com.

Pastor Lundblad is the Joe R. Engle Associate Professor of Preaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Before joining the faculty in 1997 she served as pastor of Our Saviour's Atonement Lutheran Church in Washington Heights for 17 years.

She is a graduate of Augustana College (Rock Island, Illinois) and Yale Divinity School. Her roots are in Iowa where she grew up on a farm near the small town of Gowrie. When she can get away from New York City, she loves to kayak around Deer Isle, Maine.

You may contact Pastor Lundblad at lundblad@uts.columbia.edu.

The central message of the Lutheran church is that God's love and grace are freely given by God to all people through Jesus Christ. No actions or efforts of our own are required to earn forgiveness and to experience the freedom to live lives unlimited by selfishness and sin. Lutherans trace this message back 500 years, to the work of Martin Luther, a German monk who advocated for reform within the Catholic church of his day. Luther's theology began the Protestant Reformation in Europe, and also generated reform within the Catholic church. Today, Lutherans stand in close communion with Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists and other mainline Christian denominations in preaching the good news of God's love to all people.

The hallmarks of the Lutheran church are worship and service. Lutherans celebrate Holy Communion weekly, to experience and be inspired by the ultimate love and sacrifice of Jesus. The Lutheran liturgy is full of music and singing, uniting the congregation in active worship, either in traditional or contemporary modes of expression. The goal of regular worship is not only to build up the individual and the community, but to empower each member to carry God's message of love and forgiveness into the world outside the church to build faith that is active in love.

Advent is a member of a the Metropolitan New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Visit the ELCA website for more information on the Lutheran church and Lutheran heritage.

Advent Lutheran Church is blessed to carry out its many ministries in a beautiful, historic building. Built in 1900 by the noted architect William Potter, our building's primary design elements are by Louis Tiffany. The work of the Tiffany studios graces not only all of the stained glass windows in the sanctuary, but a ceramic mosaic behind the altar as well. In addition, Tiffany designed the sanctuary lamps and pews and painted the decorative organ frontal pipes in the front of our sanctuary.

The building certainly reflects the historic musical heritage of the Lutheran tradition. Being heirs of Luther and Bach's profound hymnody, our building was built as much for music as for the spoken word. One can only appreciate the depth of our building's acoustic brilliance by experiencing it first hand.

Come share in and experience the beauty of this sacred space. It is in this beautiful sanctuary that we hear God's Word through both music and silence, through both friendship and authentic encounters with the Divine.

We hope to see you soon.